The Beverly Hills diet guru dies

LOS ANGELES: The author of The Beverly Hills Diet, a 1981
best-seller that helped jumpstart the age of the diet book even
though its pineapple-heavy regimen was dismissed as nonsense by
mainstream nutritionists, is dead at 63.

Judy Mazel died of complications from peripheral vascular
disease on October 12 in Santa Monica. Although she had no formal
training in medicine or nutrition, Mazel became interested in
weight loss while recuperating from a broken leg and reading books
on nutrition.

After studying for several months with a nutritionist, Mazel
came up with a theory about food enzymes and the digestive system
that she formulated into a complicated weight reducing plan.

The Beverly Hills Diet is based on a concept of eating one type
of food at a time, as our prehistoric ancestors are said to have
done. It avoids combining carbohydrates and proteins in the same
meal, and pushes fruit exclusively for the first 10 days.

The book was a bestseller. Its jacket included endorsements from
Linda Gray of Dallas and the actress Sally Kellerman. When
California's first lady, Maria Shriver, was asked how she lost more
than 10 kilograms while trying to break into television, she told
People magazine in 2005: "I couldn't get a job, so I went on
the Beverly Hills Diet, where you ate watermelon one day and
cheesecake the next. It worked. That was the last diet I ever went
on."

Scientists were not so kind. Medical experts took issue with
"major misstatements of scientific fact", derided the book as a
work of fiction and said the diet preyed on humankind's age-old
desire for a quick fix. Diet followers took off kilograms because
the program was low in calories, experts said.

"Not only is there no scientific evidence to support this diet
plan, but it also contradicts established medical knowledge about
nutrition," a study in the Journal of the American Medical
Association concluded in 1981.

Mazel, a former secretary, moved to Los Angeles to break into
acting but had little success. She was inspired to become a diet
counsellor when, she said, a disembodied voice told her to leave
the freeway and buy cashews, a trip that led her to a health-food
shop and an old book on food combinations.